MoH Must Be Mindful Of Judgment Debt

The Daily Graphic edition of May 27, 2014, was a story captioned “MoH To Lay Off Casual Workers”.

The story reads thus: “Hundreds of casual workers in public hospitals and health centres across the country are to be laid off, following a directive from the Ministry of Health.

“Even though the total number of workers to be affected as not readily known, it can be confirmed that at least 300 of them work in the nine health facilities in the Accra metropolis.

“The directive was issued as a result of moves by some of the casual workers, who have been engaged for between four and 12 years, to get their employment status regularized”.

This directive is against the labour law 2003, act 651, and states that anybody who is employed as a casual or temporal worker must after six month of service be considered and treated as a permanent staff, all the entitlement enjoyed by permanent staff should be extended to him or her.

According to the story, some of the casual workers have been in the employees of the Ministry for between four to twelve years.

Should they decide to sue the government, we will be having another judgment debt hanging on our necks.

Some of these issues could be handled professionally and tactfully before it becomes another blow dealt to be the Government.

Just last week, there was the announcement from the Anglogold -Ashanti, that it is laying off over 6000 workers and to start another week with another lay-off is not the type of news Ghanaians were expecting.

The Ministry of Health (MoH), is yet to officially issue a statement to clarify the issue and state the reason these numbers of people work without being regularize, until then the speculation will continue.

Information management is critical for the survival of any government and nation, the government has shown time and again that it is bereft when it comes to the management and the dissemination of information. Timing is very important in whatever we do. The timing for this action is ill-advised and government must take a second look at it.